I found him in a website called NotiVargas where he’s identified as the candidate of the Comando Tricolor, but once again, he’s not on the ballot.

Chavez has sent a message: The New Tascon List will be made, even by force.

Update 2: Some reports suggest Velásquez Becerra was a MUD candidate for mayor in Chivacoa after all, but the municipality used paper ballots instead of electronic voting. Personally, I never heard of an entire municipio going to paper voting, but hey.

It would be interesting to see what exactly is the order of the TSJ, is it just not destroying the cuadernos or not destroying and handing them out to the TSJ or CNE, if its the second there is nothing to do but destroy them,

And anyway from a legal point of view the primary is not a requisite to run, if all the parties and candidates accept the results as valid, which they do, and don’t run for office, there is no legal threat to HCR.

The ball is now on our court. What will the MUD do? If they give up easily, Chavez will win reelction in that moment. Everything that was achieved will be lost. The game will be over even before it started. #ElMomentoDeLaVerdad

This is quite an unexpected challenge to the MUD. They have to be very careful. If they don’t burn the cuadernos people are going to feel duped. There has to be a way they don’t burn them while making sure not one cedula is known to the public

While I fully understand the fears of a Tascón.List II, urgent burning of the cuadernos might tarnish the primaries. If what Mr. Becerra’s calling for is a new tally of the votes, wouldn’t random sampling suffice?

I think no one is fooled thinking that the TSJ is actually worry about the rights of Velazques, not complying with the decision would not legally affect the candidacy of HRC, comply with it contributing with a policy of political apartheid, is not only the moral decision I think is the smart one

A long time ago that the TSJ lost legitimacy in these matters, not destroying the cuadernos would compromise the legitimacy of the opposition, and more than that it would expose millions of citizens to losing their jobs and blatant discrimination, I’m a pragmatist and welcome the change and new strategies of the opposition to beat Hugo, but there are limits and this is it, we cant compromise on this

Explain why it would cast doubts on the primaries? Elaborate, please. Independently of your argument, even if it does cast doubts, it’d be even worse to lose the trust of the people who voted in the primaries.

Manuel, it’s an easier decision than that. Giving up the names doesn’t just lose the voters’ trust, it puts them in danger. Destroying the names will only increase their trust, even if it may lose the trust of the chavistas, but that’s actually an advantage come election. Someone needs to destroy the data.

Tarnish? No way.
What is done is done. Henrique is our candidate, we had huge turnover. We did it, no matter what they say, and people know it. In any case, the primaries are OUR business, not theirs. Declare the primaries void, if they want, are they gonna force the others to run?

If these bastards, motherfuckers, coñoesumadres can do something like this :
bit.ly/yzYFWV without the cuadernos, I don’t wanna imagine what they’ll do once they have them.

There might be other arguments against burning the cuadernos, but tarnishing our achievement is not one of them.

She invited her constituency (even if turn out to be small) to support her and cast their vote with the (implicit) condition that the electoral rolls would be destroyed! So she’s partially responsible for keeping MUD’s promise of destroying them! Does that make sense?

Quico your way off on this one. HCR is our candidate for President, however MCM is well within her right to defend the anonimity of her voters, furthermore, it would be most beneficial if HCR does not step on this “concha de mango”, as it would set the tone fior possible attacks or open possible “legal” hole for them to screw him, so MCM, swing away…

MCM is a citizen as anyone here, so she is free to say whatever she wants. Her response is not the official MUD’s response, so no harm done there. After all, she is NOT the chairman/speaker of the MUD, and she’s not constrained as the Mr. Aveledo might be.
Let her be and calm down. We will have to way for a response from Mr. Aveledo or Mrs. Albanes on this regard.

I agree. The MUD needs to display unity and discipline. When everyone starts firing off personal positions like this, the MUD looks like Chavismo did following the election. We are supposed to be better than they are.

The demand is not even about Velasquez’s participation on the primaries. It’s a “Habeas data” request. The PSUV tried the same when they wanted to repeat the 2008 election in Tachira. They were rejected, indicating the confidentiality of the voters must be protected, based by the Art. 60 of the Constitution. (Information from puzkas’ twitter account)

Looks like that’s not good enough now for them. Luisa Estela is doing her job.

The pattern with Chavistas loosing seems to repeat: tarnish the loss / don´t recognize it, create confussion / doubt, and never allow your opponent to celebrate:
> 2007 Referendum: victoria pirrica, victoria de mierda, the menancing “Por ahora” vallas
> 2009 elections of governorns and mayors: we got more than them (even if they lost on most populated cities)
> 2010 asamblea elections: we got more seats (even if they lost the popular vote)

And now this, which is in a way is more bizarre as they were not competing.

It all can be summed up by the grafiti outside Alcaldia Mayor back in 2009:

Oh, I thought it was a hoax! Yup, yet you understand why Chavez doesn’t show. Hey, I didn’t do anything, it is the justice… I didn’t ever knew about primarias…
Talk about honesty, about fairness, no, this is really not acceptable. I would burn all.

No! That’s what they want! Be happy, they are shitting their pants, they are crazy and running like headless chickens! It’s up to us to keep our cool.
Watching the way they are reacting, now I am really a lot more hopeful than on Sunday night.

I agree completely. I don’t think they’ll let up, not by any means, and I fear raids, and arrests, but the government can no longer pretend they’re not reacting out of fear. And the more fear informs their decisions, the more they lose their grip.

It’s always darkest before the dawn. The nastiness has just begun, but it won’t have the effect they expect.

I wrote an article about the primaries and the significance of Capriles’ landslide for Asuntos del Sur a think-tank focused on Latin America. I would really like to get real feedback from people who read and write in this blog, if you have time to read it. Thanks!

I´m really worried too about the cuadernos electorales.But nadie dijo que iba a see fácil. Ahora es que viene lo bueno. We are going to have to keep dodging their bullets. I agree too that Capriles needs to say NOW that the decision is INEJECUTABLE.

I think this was planned too, Plan B, but planned. What is planned for the case of already burned books? Maybe only : see you, they didn’t have the votes, also they burned the books… that would be harmless maybe…

If they were burned before the injunction came out there would be no reason to arrest anyone. Let’s not freak out about this people, Guido is right. We held our primary, people voted, it’s done. Let them do their thing while we keep our cool.

If the cuadernos have already been destroyed, then I’m even prouder of our leaders than I already was. The government’s reaction is no surprise: In the face of the success of the primary, they set up the ultimate catch-22 for us: Surrender the books and betray our voters, or refuse, and give them grounds to accuse us of fraud. In the face of such choices, the correct course is obvious: You protect your voters and tell Chavez to go fuck himself with a pineapple.

What happened on Sunday can’t, and won’t, be undone by any lies they come up with. If they want to play dirty this early on, they’ll lose even harder. The people are tired of threats, intimidation, and harassment. Hope is the name of the game, and so far, Chavez doesn’t seem to know how to play anymore.

A clever move from the government, reminiscent of a Bond-villain. Not that confirmation was needed, but this shows they are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to maintain power. Lets hope the votes were all in ashes before the request – leaving only a tenuous argument about true numbers or not.

It’s pretty obvious by now that this was a bushwhack, with the action probably having been thought out beforehand. I’d like to see what HCR’s reaction to all this is but more importantly why in the hell is PP and others talking first? They’re well within their rights as citizens but if the oppo isn’t on message and more importantly shows a united front against this latest assault, they’ve lost it. Chavismo is trying to overwhelm MUD by the sheer brazenness of this action and it’ll be interesting to see if the ‘fraud’ argument will carry any weight in the international press.

I think it’s great to see in full daylight the muddying of waters, the extent to which radical chavistas are prepared to go to deny earlier contractual agreements.
I also see nothing wrong in having other MUD members (MCM and PP) declare their opinion. Let HCR be the final arbiter on the matter, when he is officially proclaimed presidential candidate, later today. I would not like to see him make too much noise, before then. It would only add to unnecessary fires.

The contractual agreement was made between the MUD and the CNE, and it was apparently kept to safeguard the identities of those who voted.

If radical chavistas didn’t like the agreement, they should have ‘vociferado’ long before now.

I can only smell the sheer fright from this actions. Chavismo is in panic and they are trying to scare us. MUD has to be very carefull until October 7th. This is going to be our reality for the months ahead.
I found this today:http://majunchesploteados.blogsite.org/majunches/
Nice isn’t it?
Dirty war has started…

Just another thought. If they keep this up, the idea that a lot less than 3 million showed up, won’t that then make them underestimate the numbers in the general election and hurt government mobilization of Chavistas?

I read that too, so is hard to decide who’s right. I don’t think he got all the cuadernos of Aragua. The MUD probably knows better than I do. Remember, in Twitter they have killed Tio Simon like 20 times. When things settle, we’ll know better. I expect both sides to claim victory. The first casualty of war is the truth.

However, a young man is killed because of the decision by Luisa Estela, Carrasquero and this Mr. Nobody who make the claim at the TSJ. Isea just followed orders. What you can expect of a guy who finds acceptable the death of babies in the hospital?

This is Fu%# bull$%6. These guys haver gone too far. They didn’t even care about the primaries. Where is that coward…..he has not been heard of since Sunday. I hope people see what kind of president they stand behind. Not even worth mentioning his name.

The MUD should probably organize a quick “simulacro de votación” at the proclamation act, in front of the media for the whole country to see. They should time four pretend voters casting their vote, one after the other. One would be voting while the scond one is signing the ballot, while the third one is handing out the cedula to be found in on the list. Then show the country on a big clock that the average for the 3 of them is easily less than one minute. That would take care of all the doubt and would make the government’s move about the ballots meaningless. After all, all the government wants is to disprove the 3MM figure, which is what really hurts them.

So people should be punished for disobeying a court order that didn’t exist at the time of their act of “disobedience.” Talk about a Catch-22!

So in the future, rather than obey an order from a government agency (such as the CNE) and be punished, people should withhold action based on a possible injunction from the court. Never mind that no one is qualified to estimate the probability of such an injunction, the timing of when it will occur – or that violating the order from the government agency is, in itself, illegal and will also be punished.

I caught a statement by LL on Globovision. He hit just the right notes: The Opposition is fulfilling its promises. They promised the secrecy of the voting roles, and they delivered. They promised an open and transparent primary, and they delivered. Keep trusting us, and we will deliver on what we promise you.